Friday, April 20, 2007

I am totally out of words to describe what I feel about our current “government”.

“Disgusted”, “rage” and “bewilderment” point in the right direction, but does not come anywhere near describing the level of emotion that I feel. These people are absolutely astounding in their incompetence, deceit, egotism, and lust for unbridled power. Every day, some new revelation comes out that deepens my rage.

Take, for example, yesterday’s “performance” by the Attorney General of the U.S., Alberto (Abu) Gonzales. This man is so incompetent, he can’t even recognize that he is incompetent. He is so incompetent, he can’t even recognize he is a total failure as a pathological liar, even though he keeps trying. He’s so incompetent, he can’t even recognize that he is dragging down what little remains of George Bush’s credibility and that he needs to resign, immediately.

Mr. Gonzales came across as a dull-witted apparatchik incapable of running one of the most important departments in the executive branch.

He had no trouble remembering complaints from his bosses and Republican lawmakers about federal prosecutors who were not playing ball with the Republican Party’s efforts to drum up election fraud charges against Democratic politicians and Democratic voters. But he had no idea whether any of the 93 United States attorneys working for him — let alone the ones he fired — were doing a good job prosecuting real crimes.

He delegated responsibility for purging their ranks to an inexperienced and incompetent assistant who, if that’s possible, was even more of a plodding apparatchik. Mr. Gonzales failed to create the most rudimentary standards for judging the prosecutors’ work, except for political fealty. And when it came time to explain his inept decision making to the public, he gave a false account that was instantly and repeatedly contradicted by sworn testimony.

Even the most loyal Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee found it impossible to throw Mr. Gonzales a lifeline. The best Orrin Hatch of Utah could do was to mutter that “I think that you’ll agree that this was poorly handled” and to suggest that Mr. Gonzales should just be forgiven. Senator Sam Brownback led Mr. Gonzales through the names of the fired attorneys, evidently hoping he would offer cogent reasons for their dismissal.

Some of his answers were merely laughable. Mr. Gonzales said one prosecutor deserved to be fired because he wrote a letter that annoyed the deputy attorney general. Another prosecutor had the gall to ask Mr. Gonzales to reconsider a decision to seek the death penalty. (Mr. Gonzales, of course, is famous for never reconsidering a death penalty case, no matter how powerful the arguments are.)Mr. Gonzales criticized other fired prosecutors for “poor management,” for losing the confidence of career prosecutors and for “not having total control of the office.” With those criticisms, Mr. Gonzales was really describing his own record: he has been a poor manager who has had no control over his department and has lost the confidence of his professional staff and all Americans.

Mr. Gonzales was even unable to say who compiled the list of federal attorneys slated for firing. The man he appointed to conduct the purge, Kyle Sampson, said he had not created the list. The former head of the office that supervises the federal prosecutors, Michael Battle, said he didn’t do it, as did William Mercer, the acting associate attorney general.

Mr. Gonzales said he did not know why the eight had been on the list when it was given to him, that it had not been accompanied by any written analysis and that he had just assumed it reflected a consensus of the senior leaders of his department. At one point, Mr. Gonzales even claimed that he could not remember how the Justice Department had come to submit an amendment to the Patriot Act that allowed him to fire United States attorneys and replace them without Senate confirmation. The Senate voted to revoke that power after the current scandal broke.

This man is the top prosecutorial lawyer in the country? “Incompetent” doesn’t even describe it. “Loyal toady” is very insulting, but is appropriate.

This kind of nonsense is apparently through the entire Bush administration. It seems that most of his political appointments are just that, policital. If the person is a loyal “Bushie” (which was used by Kyle Sampson as a way to gauge a USA’s worth), then they are in for life, regardless of how badly they screw up. There have been a few notable exceptions, such as Donald Rumsfeld and Michael Brown. However, that was just because the amount of public scrutiny occurred after they botched their jobs badly. There are undoubtably many, many more incompetent toadies that not have seen the light of day. One of them, Monica Goodling just resigned rather than try to answer all the questions that have come up surrounding her role in all of this.

I swear, I wish I could find something good to say about these people, but I can’t. For a while, I was thinking that we could end up with a country that resembles the old Soviet Union or Communist China. However, I don’t believe that anymore. Those people, however underhanded, devious and evil they were, were at least competent. I doubt Bush and his minions could assemble anything like that now. Instead, I now believe that we could end up with something resembling a South American banana republic. I find it amazing that we could be a world Superpower, and a banana republic at the same time, but that appears to be what could have happened to us.

Gladly, it now appears that a large number of people have finally caught on to what Bush has been doing to this country for the last six years, and are fighting back.